American Sherlock: Murder, Forensics, and the Birth of American CSI - Hardcover

Dawson, Kate Winkler

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0525539557 ISBN 13: 9780525539551

Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2020

Synopsis

From the acclaimed author of Death in the Air ("Not since Devil in the White City has a book told such a harrowing tale"--Douglas Preston) comes the riveting story of the birth of criminal investigation in the twentieth century.

Berkeley, California, 1933. In a lab filled with curiosities--beakers, microscopes, Bunsen burners, and hundreds upon hundreds of books--sat an investigator who would go on to crack at least two thousand cases in his forty-year career. Known as the "American Sherlock Holmes," Edward Oscar Heinrich was one of America's greatest--and first--forensic scientists, with an uncanny knack for finding clues, establishing evidence, and deducing answers with a skill that seemed almost supernatural.

Heinrich was one of the nation's first expert witnesses, working in a time when the turmoil of Prohibition led to sensationalized crime reporting and only a small, systematic study of evidence. However with his brilliance, and commanding presence in both the courtroom and at crime scenes, Heinrich spearheaded the invention of a myriad of new forensic tools that police still use today, including blood spatter analysis, ballistics, lie-detector tests, and the use of fingerprints as courtroom evidence. His work, though not without its serious--some would say fatal--flaws, changed the course of American criminal investigation.

Based on years of research and thousands of never-before-published primary source materials, American Sherlock captures the life of the man who pioneered the science our legal system now relies upon--as well as the limits of those techniques and the very human experts who wield them.

About this title

About the Author

Kate Winkler Dawson is a seasoned documentary producer, whose work has appeared in The New York Times, WCBS News and ABC News Radio, PBS NewsHour, and Nightline. She is the author of Death in the Air: The True Story of a Serial Killer, the Great London Smog, and the Strangling of a City and teaches journalism at The University of Texas at Austin.

Review

"At last a book about the pioneering scientist, Edward Oscar Heinrich, whose early 20th century work helped launch modern criminal investigation. Part suspenseful detective story, part compelling character study, American Sherlock does full justice to Heinrich's starts, stumbles, and his startling brilliance." —Deborah Blum, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York 

“DNA evidence, CSI franchises: How did forensic science become sexy as well as part of our culture? In American Sherlock, Kate Winkler Dawson offers up a riveting biography of Edward Oscar Heinrich who helped put the science into old fashion detective work. His cases, his methods, his lasting contributions to crime busting are all here. This is an insightful book about the science of insight.” –Joe Drape, author of American Pharaoh

"A meticulously researched, thoroughly fascinating account of the Great Detective who ought to be a household name, but isn't...I was completely immersed in American Sherlock, from start to finish." —Lyndsay Faye, author of Gods of Gotham and Dust and Shadow: An Account of the Ripper Killings by Dr. John H. Watson

About this edition

• Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons
• Publication date: 2020
• ISBN 10: 0525539557
• ISBN 13: 9780525539551
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 336